Some contemporary or legacy digital images conform to 24-bit formats. These images comprise as much as 24 bits to store both color and brightness information, such as luminance and chrominance data, for each pixel in an image. Such formats preserve enough image information to allow the image to be rendered or reproduced by legacy electronic displays and are thus considered to be output referred standards. Legacy displays typically have a dynamic range (DR) of three orders of magnitude. As normal human vision can discriminate contrast ratios of up to 1:10,000 or more however, images with significantly higher dynamic ranges may be perceived.
Developments in modern electronic display technology allow image rendering and reproduction at a higher dynamic range, which significantly exceeds the DR of legacy displays. High dynamic range (HDR) images more faithfully represent real-world scenes than image formats that conform to output referred standards. Thus, HDR images may be considered as scene referred. In the context of HDR images and displays that are capable of rendering them, legacy or other images and displays of more limited DR may be referred to herein as low dynamic range (LDR) images/displays.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section. Similarly, issues identified with respect to one or more approaches should not assume to have been recognized in any prior art on the basis of this section, unless otherwise indicated.